by Adams, P R
You wish to know more about Kwon. We all wish many things.
Rimes replayed the call that had brought him out from the hotel and listened to the directions to the unnamed café again; for a moment, he thought he’d lost his way, but then he spotted one of the landmarks. He was close, and he still had a minute.
Rimes felt as if he’d stepped into an alien, nightmarish parody of Earth.
How many had been buried alive? How many had been abandoned, screaming for help?
Rimes moved through the crowds, struggling not to react to people brushing into him. He was on a deadline. He began to emulate the thugs around him, pulling his gray jacket’s hood over his head, shoving his hands into the pockets, then leaning into his walk. The cold was biting, numbing. The hood couldn’t protect his face, either from the cold or the suspicious glares. His height marked him as a foreigner—an enemy all Koreans could come together to despise.
Rimes tried not to get angry with the people. The reunified Koreans were the offspring of two inbred, antagonistic cousins. The new nation, still eaten by internal strife, had become little more than a shadow of either of its former halves.
Rimes stopped beneath a glowing sign—a bottle, a cup, and an infantile creature, all dancing. This is it.
Unfortunately, the cartoonish art was ubiquitous, and it hadn’t been easy to find the right sign. He glanced through the window, saw a sign in English (“Coffee!”), then stepped inside. It was small and cramped, with several tables and chairs, and a counter. The customers were almost exclusively Korean, two of them hunched over, trying to hide deformities—one with a sheet of flesh where there should have been an eye, the other a shabbily constructed nose.
Rimes moved to a two-seat table at the back and settled into a chair opposite a similarly dressed man with Slavic features: his contact. The man smiled as though he were simply a foreigner finding comfort in the company of a fellow outsider. His teeth were surprisingly bright, his face cleanly shaved. Rimes made him for a corporate man.
“We buy from the same tailor,” the man said with a slight Russian accent, pointing to his gray jacket.
“I recommend him to all my friends,” Rimes said. “You picked this out?”
“Yes. It suits you well,” the Russian said, extending his right hand. “Anton Tymoshenko. And you are Jackson Rimes. It’s good to finally meet you in person. I’ve heard quite a bit about you.”
Rimes shook with him. “Jack, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course.” Tymoshenko chuckled. It was a pleasant sound after the discordant roar outside. “No offense intended.”
“I can’t take offense to being called by my name, Mr. Tymoshenko,” Rimes said.
“Anton, please.” He nodded at the counter. A dainty, young Korean woman stood behind it. She was staring off into the distance, smiling. “You should try some of their coffee.”
“I will, thanks.” Rimes stood. “What’s good?”
“Nothing I’ve tried yet,” Tymoshenko said with a wink. “Truly, life is full of adventure.”
Rimes stepped to the counter and waited for the young woman to acknowledge him. She finally closed her eyes and sighed heavily. For a moment, Rimes thought she might have forgotten him; then her eyes opened again. She gave a slight eye roll, then looked at him with a completely blank stare.
Rimes spent several minutes trying to order a small coffee, struggling with the young woman’s weak grasp of English and his even weaker grasp of Korean. Eventually he returned to the table with a paper cup that smelled like one of the open sewer ditches running through the city.
After further investigation, he discovered it smelled better than it tasted. He cringed and pushed the cup aside. “Eight dollars for that. Brutal.”
“There are few places that could manage something so bad,” Tymoshenko said. “They probably take pride in it. How many other places are so proud about their inability to speak English?”
Rimes bit his bottom lip to keep from laughing. A standing law prohibited the teaching of English, although many Koreans sought private tutoring anyway. “It’s an odd choice.”
“Koreans imagine humanity spawned here, but only the best stayed behind,” Tymoshenko laughed. “But it makes it easy for us to discuss things out in the open, yes?”
Rimes looked around to see if anyone was listening. Aside from the occasional inquisitive glance, they had been deemed unworthy of attention. “I’m not so sure the best would stay behind. Not … here.”
Tymoshenko winked. “Not everyone wants to leave home, you know?”
Rimes said, “I’m curious why you contacted me … and how you knew to reach me here.”
Tymoshenko leaned forward, his elbows resting on the table. “You are a smart man. Why don’t you tell me what you think.”
“Well, I’d start by assuming you’re a company man, metacorporate, probably EEC. And you want to know what I’m doing in Seoul after visiting Mumbai.”
Tymoshenko laughed. “You like to dance around what you mean, yes? However, I like to get to the point,” Tymoshenko said. “I am a businessman, an ambitious one with a bright future. I must seize it, take risks, take charge.”
Rimes nodded.
“I’ve been following you for a little while now. That shouldn’t be a surprise. What you do, it’s not so secret as you think. You have your intelligence gatherers, like your Bureau friends, and we have ours. Sometimes, we’re all closer than we realize. We have mutual friends. And enemies.”
Rimes shifted in his seat.
Had Pachnine been an EEC spy? Did the Special Security Council know, and still assign him to the team? Tendulkar, Pachnine, Nakata … who can I trust?
Tymoshenko sipped his coffee, grimacing. “It is no secret we are in an extremely competitive situation. Biotech is key. Two tables away, you see potential customers for gene therapy. We can create cures no one would have dreamed possible twenty years ago.”
“I understand the potential,” Rimes said.
“New worlds out there wait for exploitation, for humans who are stronger or who can breathe ammonia or who can withstand one-hundred-degree temperatures without protective gear. We can get part of the way there looking at Earth species, maybe. We do a great deal with that already. But what exists out there—” Tymoshenko indicated the heavens with a wave of his coffee cup. “That is what will crack open the gateway to the stars.”
“What about remotes?”
Tymoshenko smiled. “Proxies? Maybe an answer. But they are not our answer. People spend tens of thousands of dollars to have tiger fur. Imagine what they will pay for the ability to fly … or to swim through an alien ocean. To live out there. To have adventures of their own.”
Rimes tried the coffee again; it was still undrinkable. “All right. There will always be a fringe that sort of thing appeals to, but most folks aren’t going to give up their humanity permanently for a few thrills.”
Tymoshenko winked again. “You are right, of course. Certain assumptions must be made, certain paths must be taken. We must be adaptable in this regard, or we cannot compete. Which gets me to my point. Your friends are playing a dangerous game with you. I would like to help you, but, as you know, I am a businessman.”
Rimes leaned in closer. “What are you offering?”
“You should ask what I want,” Tymoshenko said. “But of course you already know.”
Rimes gritted his teeth. “If I knew, I wouldn’t be in this little slice of heaven.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Tymoshenko finished his coffee and set the cup down. “I think I am going to be sick after drinking that. There’s simply nothing we can do to inoculate humanity against such a thing.” He stood, made a face and placed a hand on his gut. “You’ll excuse me, I hope? I’m not so strong as I’d imagined.”
Rimes stood, concerned. “Are you—”
Tymoshenko patted him on the shoulder. “I will be fine.” He pressed his empty paper cup into Rimes’s hand. “Here, take my cup. A smart man learns f
rom little things, yes?”
Rimes watched Tymoshenko head out into the cold. It was starting to rain. Tymoshenko pulled his hood up and pushed his way into the crowd, a giant among the stunted masses.
Rimes studied the cup, then stuffed it into his pocket and exited the shop, pulling his hood up and walking in the opposite direction.
A sliver of data film was curled around the cup bottom.
Excepting a few subtle differences, the Emperor’s Palace could have been the Golden Brahmin. Even the smog was the same.
Rimes set aside his earpiece and closed his eyes while his stomach lurched. He’d already destroyed the data film, but there was no way to destroy what he’d seen. He couldn’t conceive of some of the numbers, couldn’t imagine living with himself to attain those numbers.
Why am I making such a big deal about this? The genie’s already out of the bottle, literally. Why pretend otherwise? It’s not really breaking the law. EEC needs data on the genetic materials behind these genies, Anton wants to be the one to acquire it. Anton wins, EEC wins, I win.
But that’s not me. No matter how Anton likes to play it, I’m not a mercenary. He’s got such good access, he can get the blood samples we took from the Sundarbans and reverse engineer them himself.
But that won’t do for Anton. The offer makes that clear. They want a pure sample to start from. There’s no love lost between these metacorporations. Nearly thirty-thousand registered genies, probably twice as many hidden away in labs or off-world, and EEC’s responsible for fewer than five thousand, none with this alien DNA. It irks them. And it limits their revenue stream.
“We make your tomorrow today.” Doesn’t that say it all?
A gentle knock broke through the stormy clouds of his thoughts. He glanced out the peephole; Kleigshoen and Metcalfe stood in the hallway, dressed in casual attire. Rimes opened the door, then sat on his bed.
“Feeling any better?” Kleigshoen settled into the room’s entertainment console chair as Metcalfe turned the desk chair around and seated himself.
“Not really.” Rimes rubbed his eyes. “They can’t make coffee here to save their lives, apparently.”
Metcalfe laughed. “I have a friend who swears by all things Korean. He’s of Korean descent, though.”
Rimes let the comment go. “Any luck?”
“Yes,” Metcalfe said. “You might even call it the jackpot.”
“We’ve got Kwon,” Kleigshoen said.
Rimes stood. “What? Where?”
Metcalfe chuckled. “Whoa, slow down. We don’t have Kwon, we have a solid lead on Kwon. A very solid lead. We also have confirmation on the identities of the team you took down in Sundarbans. They weren’t LoDu.”
Rimes gaped. “What? How do you know that?”
Metcalfe assumed an official air. “We are investigating the attack by LoDu operatives on an international military unit enforcing Special Security Council orders—”
“You lied?”
“Embellished,” Metcalfe said. “We were dealing with LoDu, so we had to stay close to the truth. They ran it up the chain, used their contacts in the Chinese diplomatic corps. The Chinese have too much at stake to be lackeys this time around, and the Council knew full well what was going on, sanctioned or not.”
“No.” Rimes paced the room for a moment, shaking his head. “LoDu gave up the team. They’re dead, they were compromised. There’s nothing to be gained saying they were operating on LoDu’s behalf.”
Kleigshoen looked at Metcalfe. “Actually, we think they’re telling the truth.”
“To an extent,” Metcalfe said. “It certainly looks like a rogue operation, and it wouldn’t be the first. LoDu has had a handful of genies go their own way the last few years. It’s nothing on the scale of ADMP or EEC, but they’ve had several incidents. Even T-Corp has had problems, and they engineered theirs to be more compliant.”
Rogue genies?
Rimes settled back on the bed, tired again. “What about Kwon?”
“Another problem child, apparently,” Kleigshoen said. “With a criminal history. Even the Korean police consider him problematic. They’ve assigned us an officer—Inspector Chae Kang-joh—to help move this along.”
“I’m almost disappointed LoDu didn’t send a security team to kill us,” Rimes said.
“They’ll still have plenty of opportunities,” Metcalfe said. “Don’t be so sure they won’t.”
18
4 March 2164. Seoul, Korea.
* * *
Seoul Metropolitan Police Bureau 102 was a narrow, ten-story building with a stained, yellow brick facade, built upon the blasted ruins of its predecessor. It was early, but lights were already glowing from several windows.
The interior was plain, with faux stone paneling, cracked pink-gray floor tiles that echoed even the quietest footfall, and a noisy, lurching elevator.
At the fifth floor, Rimes held the elevator door open for Kleigshoen and Metcalfe, and they made their way to where they had been told they would find Inspector Chae Kang-joh’s cubicle.
The meticulously clean, organized cubicle was filled with digital frames that looped through pictures of what were probably Chae’s wife and two daughters. Kleigshoen smiled wistfully as a photo of Chae and his daughters flashed for several seconds. Chae was nowhere to be seen.
Were we dumped off on some useless obsessive-compulsive?
Minutes dragged as they waited. At 7:50 sharp, the stairwell door opened, revealing a man who walked with a brisk, purposeful stride, adjusting his cuffs and brushing imaginary dust from his jacket.
Chae.
He stopped abruptly, and his nostrils flared when he saw Rimes, but his eyes ultimately settled on Metcalfe. “How may I help you?”
Metcalfe extended a hand. “Brent Metcalfe.” His deep voice echoed in the empty office. “These are my partners, Dana Kleigshoen and Jack Rimes. We’re from the Intelligence Bureau.”
“Inspector Chae Kang-joh.” Chae stared at Metcalfe’s hand and adjusted his tie.
Metcalfe gave his most charming smile through clenched teeth. “We were told to seek you out, Inspector.”
Chae shook his head. The man’s lack of even the flimsiest of social subterfuges was shocking. “It would be easier if you spoke Korean.”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” Metcalfe said.
Chae didn’t answer, offering only a sour, disapproving look. He glanced at Kleigshoen and Rimes without making eye contact.
Metcalfe sighed. “I apologize for the trouble. I understand you’re in charge of the Kwon Myung-bak case?”
Chae adjusted his tie and checked his cuffs again. “The Kwon Myung-bak case is mine. It has been classified as a cold case.”
Metcalfe said, “The Bureau wants to speak to Mr. Kwon on a very sensitive matter. We would greatly appreciate your cooperation.”
Chae’s jaw muscles worked as he ground his teeth.
“I understand it can be frustrating, Inspector.” Metcalfe winked and nodded at Kleigshoen. “We’ve been through some fairly frustrating challenges ourselves. In India. We received excellent cooperation there.”
Rimes caught the hint of a smile touching Kleigshoen’s lips.
Chae sighed loudly, then pushed past Metcalfe. Another sigh and Chae dropped into his chair, synchronizing his earpiece with the desktop console.
After several seconds of ignoring them, his face flushed. “It would appear I have been assigned to help you until you have been satisfied.”
“I’m very sorry for the trouble, Inspector. We’ll do our best to make this as quick and painless as possible.” Metcalfe looked at Kleigshoen and smiled. “We just need some help locating Mr. Kwon, and we’ll be on our way.”
Chae nodded once and submitted a series of requests. After several seconds, he detached from his console and stood. “If you will follow, please.”
Kleigshoen looked at Metcalfe curiously.
Metcalfe waved her back. “Inspector, where are we going?”
; Chae looked at Metcalfe impatiently. “I would like to end my involvement in this quickly. Please?”
He led them to the first floor, where he stopped at the car pool, then brusquely directed Metcalfe to wait at the front of the building before disappearing into a stairwell.
Metcalfe led them outside. He looked at Kleigshoen and Rimes with a pained expression. “You two have been remarkable,” Metcalfe said. “The rudeness … If it’s any consolation, I think we could have done worse.”
Rimes shrugged. “They still haven’t gotten used to foreigners. We see it all the time, in the Commandos.”
The three of them walked to the corner. It was chilly out, and pedestrians were beginning to crowd the sidewalks. The stench of garlic hung heavy in the air; food carts were setting up all along the street.
Rimes, used to covert missions in the dead of night, hated it. “So much activity, so many people packed into such a small area. What do they do? How do they avoid going insane?”
“Who said they haven’t?” Metcalfe asked, half-joking. “They spend more time connected to the Grid than any other culture in the world.”
Rimes watched in disbelief as a man looking at something on his earpiece casually bumped into him, then did the same to Kleigshoen, acting as if neither were present. The man pushed his way into a group waiting at a crosswalk and started into the busy street just as the light changed.
Rimes shook his head at the disturbing sight. The man was in another world, oblivious to reality. “Any idea what the police want Kwon for?”
Metcalfe turned as Chae pulled up in a small HuCorp electric SUV and stopped in front of them. “Homicide, I guess.”
They climbed into the SUV without a word. Chae drove south for several minutes, meticulously working his way through foot traffic and reckless drivers until finally turning west onto quieter streets.
Metcalfe twisted in his seat slightly. He caught Kleigshoen and Rimes’s eyes, then looked at Chae. “So, Inspector, maybe you could share some details of the Kwon case you were working on?”
Chae stiffened and looked straight ahead.